Happy New Year

Hi all,

A very happy New Year to all of you. Welcome to Twenty Ten. Never mind that its midway into January; new year wishes are always welcome. But in a way its funny. All of us know that life is a bundle of happiness and sorrow, often unequally and undemocratically distributed among years indicating clearly that all new years cannot be equally ‘happy’; yet at the stroke of midnight on 31st December we sincerely wish a happy new year to all we know.

Perhaps that’s what a new year churns out of you—your optimism, your best, your life-affirming force even in the face of imminent crises. Cheers to life.

One more thing: two of my long awaited publications in the form of chapters in edited books saw the light of day by end 2009—

• An essay on Dattani’s Final Solutions in “Final Solutions: Text and Criticism” edited by Angelie Multani published by Pencraft International.
• An essay on Bhagat's One Night @ the Call Centre in "Social Consciousness in Postcolonial Indian Fiction in English" edited by Partha Mukhopadhyay published by Sarup and Sons.
  

The 'Other' Durga Puja

The Durga Pujas are here. For Bengalees all over the world this is a great moment. Wait, it won’t be proper to call a five day festival a moment. Let’s call it an extended metaphor of life in its best form. Apparently people forget all their sorrows, tensions and problems of life during these days and plunge into this massive celebration of the life’s vitality. Here’s wishing you all a very happy sharadiya. I hope you would excuse me for wishing you all a happy Durga Puja on Nabami, when in fact, it’s almost over. Nevertheless, it is never too late for a wish.

Well, what exactly is this celebration of life’s vitality? The simple answer is: ask a Bengali. And the difficult answer is: see it yourselves. For the best first hand experience you have to be at Kolkata during this time but for a less complicated version any Bengali community in the world would do. Whether they say hello to each other throughout the year doesn’t really matter but they must get together for a Durga Puja. It’s a marvelous teamwork—the Durga Puja. At Kolkata and at most other places in Bengal the clubs plunge for the pujas well in advance, set up their exorbitant budgets and chalk out plans for the final deluge. If it is artistic, big-budgeted and marketed enough, deluge of all kinds follow (cash and kind—in the form of crowds). The city changes overnight. Bright and dazzling lights (strung, hung, mounted and even floated) obliterate all memories of recent power cuts. Police personnel and volunteers patrol at every significant crossing and the roads are flooded with people—pandal hoppers who incessantly pour into the puja pandals north to south, east to west. Everyone is dressed up at his/her best and (believe me it’s a wonder) the next door common girl looks suddenly gorgeous in her ashtami saree. During no other time or festival do so many people together enjoy a common holiday. Yet three kinds of people spend their busiest time during the Pujas. They are the police, the cooks and waiters at the restaurants and the media personnel. Well, during the Pujas people must take the roads in a jubilant (!) and festive mood, hence the police; once they’ve hit the streets, they’ll sooner or later feel hungry, hence the food people; and all this activity must projected live since people are TRP, hence the media.

This is the festive spirit in a nutshell. Well, the mention of media reminds me of something. Yet again it’s a wonder how during the Pujas the media tends to voluntarily forget what they love most—political complications. Instead they send all their correspondents to cover the Pujas. The senior and apparently ‘good’ journalists get at best flight tickets to cover international Durga Pujas and at worst Pujas in Mumbai or Delhi while the trainees and less fortunate ones have to travel to the god–forbidden districts of West Bengal. For a change the Breaking News is that the streets are being flooded with people or Sourav Ganguly just paid a visit to the local Puja pandal. Locals are worshipped everywhere and the Durga Puja gives us an opportunity to see our celebrities being party to what we enjoy as well and thereby derive a subversive pleasure. Its like seeing the party you’ve voted for, win.

But the question remains as to how sincere is this representation of joy? Does everyone ‘enjoy’ the apparent ‘facelift’ of the city? What about ‘other’ voices? In this incessant game of visual projection that often becomes an assault on our senses, is everyone invited, as they do it in Samsung? What about big-budget pujas in dingy alleys? While in the queue to the pandal have we turned our eyes to the shut windows of the nearby house? Inside it inhabitants may be waiting for all of it to be over so that their ground floor windows could be reopened. Or worse still, what about those houses that lie behind the acute artistic carvings on cloth covers en route the pandal. The poor souls have been denied their tiny share of fresh air and sunlight for these days. Add to it the nuisance of the mike. Huge woofers, boxes and digital technology collaborate to multiply the volume of music that accompanies the Puja for all five days. For strategic locations where sound waves of several Pujas meet, it’s a real free for all to an extent that you are unable to hear the person standing next to you. Before all this has gone the ‘chanda’ phase, where you are expected to donate heavy sums for the fund-raising ‘efforts’ of the organizers. The more the fund, the better the arrangements, the cleverer the theme and hence greater the chance of winning prizes. On the pretext of religiosity it’s a primordial battle for the first position.

Well, doesn’t really mean that I don’t enjoy the Durga Puja and this huge human deluge. But when would we spare a thought for those who don’t?

(Also check out Ushasi’s article in anandabazar patrika today, which is, incidentally on similar lines)

Sorry guys for an apparent inaction in this blog ever since its inception. My new appointment at the University of GourBanga and changing responsibilities with it made it a bit difficult for me. (I’ve always been good at excuses!)

Life often props up with its ugly face delivering a catastrophic blow to an otherwise happy movement. We all know that but when the occasion really arrives it becomes hard to bear that. That’s what makes me return here, to this page, —a sudden, postmodern slap of tragedy. A deadly one. My father-in-law is no more. He passed away on Friday, the 3rd of July 2009.

That puts an end to a mere 66-year life—a mediocre existence, a paltry pension and realistic concerns for his family. That’s where it hurts most. The sheer reality of the event makes it even harder to be believed. Had he been ailing, a troublesome old hag with bed sore, existing like an organism; death would have been a cause for rejoice. There are people in my family for whom death would be a blessing. But the person who used to look after them without ever complaining is now himself beyond human reach.

My father-in-law was never an extraordinary person. He had worked for the UCO Bank, built a house, got his daughters married, retired, maintained all important documents with an extraordinary precision, made all payments well before due date, never neglected an ailment, hated avant-garde bangla band and had believed in himself. He had always been some kind of a patriarch with strongly gendered views about society and culture. Yet he had literally broad shoulders on which he could take an immense load. And at troubled times, his sheer presence was an immense moral booster for everyone around him. Tall and erect, he was always active and dynamic till almost the last day.

In fact he had walked into the Peerless hospital with those long and confident strides on the 16th of June, never to return. After 18 days of struggle we ended up on the losing side. He had reported an acute stomach pain, visited a doctor who referred him to the Peerless apparently for some routine examinations. A USG and CT Scan pointed to a lump that had grown to the size of a football inside the stomach. An operation followed which took longer than expected (4 hours.) The lump was removed and he was gradually recovering but after solid food conditions deteriorated. Internal bleeding began, blood had again to be transfused (a total of 6 bottles), blood pressure fell below recognition leading to an ARF (Acute renal failure) followed by convulsion, a massive cardiac arrest and cerebral stroke. All this happened within 10 hours. The question why an otherwise healthy man with good BP, heart and kidney fell prey to such major attacks remains unanswered. The doctors hardly explained matters, they only pointed out that condition is worsening so that we remain prepared for the inevitable instead of thinking of questioning treatment standards.

My daughter, at two and a half years has been deprived of his love and affections that were due to her. My mother-in-law, always heavily dependent on him has nothing more to cling to. His wish of seeing both his granddaughters together during the durga pujas remain unfulfilled. As for me, our attachment has always been more than a father-in-law—son-in-law relation. He had known and loved me since I was in class 10. He was my ‘kaku’ who later graduated to be my ‘baba’ by virtue of my love and marriage with his wonderful younger daughter. It was he who, despite everything, taught those wonderful values in my wife.

Mr. Subrata Kumar Sinha, wherever you are, rest in peace.

Blogging the Diary

I had this habit of writing a diary. When I was a kid, on every new year, my father used to bring me a new diary.With a smell of the out-from-the-press pages I set to write. Scribblings, random thoughts that comes across the mind. The most important things were often not written. I tended to be too busy with it to write about it. Some of them however, were written down, later. The best part of having a personal diary to yourself is when you get back to it, maybe ten years later. Memories, sweet and sad ; suddenly evoked from a dormant corner of the mind. A Blog is like a personal diary.Or Is it? Diaries were written for the self, not for the world. Blogs are for the world to see. Much more egotistic.Isn't it?

Debut

I'm always late. When I was in school, the school bus waited as I ran towards it(On most cases it didn't wait.) My students often wait for me in class these days. I finally bought a digital camera when it was no longer a fashion statement to have one. The gadget had quietly become a part of the self; the megapixels had enmeshed themselves with our neurons and tendons. One day if you tear apart our bodies, you'll find microchips, USB ports and WAN systems in a cross section of the skin. That was a digression, you see. I am late in filling up application forms, I usually complete papers on the day I am supposed to deliver the presentation and here I am, blogging away for the first time in my life when all others are probably bored with it.

But somebody said, 'better late than never'! So let it be then.
Here we Go!